Thursday

Device Uses Solar Energy To Convert Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel

There is a lot of time spent talking about what should be blamed for causing global warning and not enough on finding practical soloutions. Thankfully, scientists at the University of California are working on a way of exploiting sunlight to transfer greenhouse gas into useful products such as energy. The process involves splitting CO2 into carbon monoxide and oxygen. Doing this would have several benefits; it is more fuel efficient than splitting H2O, which is currently more common, it produces a useful chemical, which is used for various things such as making plastics, and more importantly, it reduces greenhouse gas.Right now, the problem is making a semiconductor powerful enough to make the splitting of CO2 practical. They are looking at a gallium-phosphide semiconductor, which has a band gap large enough so that no additional energy source needs to be implemented for help. It is also a great absorber of energetic visible light.Hopefully, they find out the missing piece of this puzzle as it can be very beneficial to our planet.